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LIFE, DEATH, 



OTHER POEMS. 



GEORGE H. CALVERT. 



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BOSTON: 

LEE AND SHEPARD, PUBLISHERS. 

NEW YORK2 

CHARLES T. DILLINGHAM. 



\ 






CopyrigHt, 1882, 
Br GEORGE H. CALVERT. 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge: 
Electro typed and Printed by II. 0. Iloughton & Co. 



LIFE, DEATH, 

AND OTHER POEMS. 



CONTES"TS. 



PAGE 

LITE 7 

DEATH 12 

SPRING 17 

GARIBALDI 19 

ASPIRATION 24 

TRUTH 28 

IDEAL 30 

REAL 40 

THE BEAUTIFUL 49 

ROSA 51 

FOUNDATIONS 73 

POETRY 77 

CEASELESS CREATION 78 

SKETCHES 83 

NO END , , 88 

OMNIPRESENCE OF BEAUTY 91 



LIFE. 

Life sparkles with poetic gleamings, 

As Heaven with lucent stars. 

Unto the deeper dreamings 
Of the soul's solitude, fresh bars 

Of tenderest music bring 

A delicate nourishment, 
As to our inmost virtue sing 
Chorals, of angel voices blent. 

The Powers that launch a human soul 
On life's eternity, 
On towards a boundless goal, 
Joy with creative glee, 



LIFE, 

Mid supersolar lights, 
Mid unapproachable mights, 
Whose will peoples th' infinitudes of space, 
Whose playthings are wild comets' fiery race. 

Children of light are we and truth, 
Luminaries, to beam for aye 
In an unwrinkled youth ; 
Untouched by sour decay, 
When once we be uprisen 
Above this earthen prison, 
Loaded no more with flesh, erect and glad 
We soar, buoyant and free, only with spirit clad. 

Towards cleaner, wiser thought ever to mount, 

Upbuoyed by Love, that streams, 
From unimaginably holy fount, 

Through all our doings, fancies, dreams. 



LIFE. 

Purging them of their stains 

And red, impassioned pains. 
In God's soft arms enfolded we : 
This is our possible destiny. 

Truth watches us with sleepless eye 
From far, superimperial throne, 
Set deeper in the glittering sky 
Than the one constant star who all alone 
Guides our dark courses on the sea, — 
One of Truth's raptured servants he, — 
While she, puissant in primal dower. 
Sways the whole universe with God's unmeted power. 

And hand in hand with her twin-sister. Love, 
Together they enclasp the naked moth 
And planets and the steadfast suns above. 
And all that throbs, e'en to the froth 



10 LIFE. 

That rides a moment on the billow's back, 
Illuming the dim caverns of remorse, 
Licrhtino; life ever on its shadowed track, 
Missing no birth, and smiling on the birthful corse. 

Th' invisible Heaven unresting weaves ' 

Around, within us life's quick web 
With threads finer, more beautiful than sheaves 
Of light forth from her eyes by midnight shed. 

And what a gift is human life ! 

To be a new immortal spirit ! 
Wooed by th' eternities, that it grow rife 
The bliss and beauties of angelic good t' inherit. 

Around, above, within us beat, — 
Inaudible to earthen senses, — 
Th' eternal pulses of creative heat 

Aye wreathing spiritual recompenses, 



LIFE. 11 

For which, through holy fires that in us burn, 

We with a sane forefeehng yearn, 
We the choice children of all-folding Might : 
Not compassed round with darkness are we, but with 
light. 



DEATH. 

Life's loving brother, indefatigable Death, 
Keeps Life alert and young. 
Without him, Life's sweet breath, 
Rank and unbreathable through healthy lung, 
Would sicken Life himself, that, pale 
As frighted sky in an eclipse, 
His eyes grow blear, his spirits fail, 
Smiles vanish from his leaden lips. 
And, shuddering in a dull despair. 
To see matter's unchecked increase. 
Would shriek towards Heaven a piteous prayer 

That he might quick decease. 
Ere he be suffocated by 



DEATH. 13 

His offspring. They, up piled in monstrous mounds, — 
Now that they cannot die, — 
No longer know or beauty, grace, or bounds ; 
In unproportioned crowds of lurid life 

Pressing each other for more room, 

Wrangle in unavailing strife. 

Faith and Hope waning in the gloom 

Exuded from usurping matter ; 
The watchful angel no more there to shatter 

Its tightening fetters, hopeless age 
Wailing in swarms of slow decrepitude. 

Impotent to die, and thus elude 
The shocks of helpless rage 

At its imprisonment on earth, — 

Earth in soiled ragged gray enwrapt, 

Of its dear greenery unsapt. 

Grown to a gross material Hell, 

Where never more is heard the knell 



14 DEATH. 

Of a new liberating birth ; 
Boyhood outnumbering childhood, manhood both, 
While age, more numerous than all the three. 

Gasps in imbecile sloth, 
Cursing its heavenly privilege to be. 

Banish good Death, and all things soon 
In agony would pray 
For his recall, to lift them out of swoon, 

To free them from deathless decay. 

Aye, Heaven's brave minister is he, 
The world's unwearied cleanser, 

Divine in his ubiquity, 
Of freshness and of sweetness the dispenser, 

Unresting key that is forever 

Opening the bridal bloom of spring ! 
Triumphant spirit, that dost seem to sever 
The body thou renew'st and dost re-wing. 



DEATH. 15 

Gross earthy thoughts have made the scythe 
Thy symbol, with grim skeleton, and skull 
Grinning in mockery of life. A blithe 

Ethereal figure, beautiful 

As a May-dawn, or peeping pink 

Of the first rose, or maiden's blush. 

Or boreal joy's ecstatic flush, — 
These were fit symbols for earth's beautifier, 

Man's lifter to th' angelic choir ; 
For thou, thou art the link 
Twixt life and life. Dear Death ! loud hail to 

thee! 
Thou holy handmaid of eternity ! 

All nature keeps itself alive by dying, — 
Seeming to die ; bodies even die not. 
They do but change ; for spirit is ever plying 
Creative power ; and so from rankest rot 



16 DEATH. 

Of matter life upsprings, 
Exulting in fresh wings, 
Breathing with a new breath 
Inbreathed from high beneficence : there is no Death. 



SPRING. 

Late art thou, but to come thou couldst not fail, 

Divinest minister of the divine. 

Firstling of the great Sun, we hail 
Thy bounteous plenitude of green, 
Sprung from the deep mysterious mine 

Of life, unfathomable and unseen. 

Thou floodst our hearts with beauty from the bloom 
Of thy young, happy face. 
And from our thoughts their gloom 
With virgin joyousness dost chase, 
And tremulous glee of flowering trees. 

With whose fresh beauties the caressing breeze 

Dallies, showering sweet breath into the air, 



18 SPRING. 

And sunny kisses, with bold stealth 
Seizing their vernal perfumes rare. 

Enriching nature with her own new wealth. 
This sudden sun-born burst 
Of leafy life all round our earth, 

Quick resurrection of hushed nature, hearsed 
In winter's crypt, this bright rebirth, 
This universal blossoming, 
This certain strangling of cold death 
By the warm Herculean breath 

Of the reviving Spring 
In her old earthen cradle, — this 

Rhythmic renewal of deep nature's bliss. 

Is token from th' all-loving and all-seeing 
Of man's reblossom'd joy in a perennial being. 



GAKIBALDI. 

Again is Italy summoned to mourn, 
Yet with a thankful cheerfulness, 
That her loved Hero is upborne 
When the high work, 't was his to bless 

His country with, is done. 
Distracted Italy is one. 
United, self-directing, free 

Of foreign force, while he, — 
One of her saviors, who 
As child could bravely save an adult life, 

And, foremost of a patriot crew. 
Spent a stout manhood in ennobling strife, — 
Ascended to his burnished seat 



20 GARIBALDI. 

Blest by full hearts, which he had swelled 

With freemen's blood and made to beat 
With pulses that had quelled 

Fierce tyrannies. The famous man 
Passed calmly on, more reverenced, more dear, 

To a new, thankful nation than 

Any son living. 

'Bove his bier 
All the past greatness shone of Italy ; 

All souls that through the struggling ages 
Had boldly fostered her high destiny. 
The men who live in consecrated pages. 
Whom we that breathe outside the warm confines 
Of Alps and Apennines, 

Study for high enlightenment 

And stouter bracing of our souls, — 

Pages whence the new hardiment 

Of hero or of thinker rolls 

Upon us waves of strength and thought : 



GARIBALDI. 21 

These gloried ones shine there in circles wrought 
Of superearthly splendor^ quick to greet, 

With heavenly salutation meet, 
Their Garibaldi, him who, single-handed, 
Had wrested from the tyrants 'gainst him banded 
Populous Naples and broad Sicily, 
And given them to triumphant Italy : 

Cavour, Mazzini, who so well 
In his large soul foredrew the nation's span, 
Victor Emmanuel, 
The patriot King, and man 
So true, that he deserved to be 
King of emancipated Italy ; 

Manin, and many others who 

With heart-beat strong and true. 
Had spent them for their country's good. 
To him these were the nearest. 
Yet hardly were they dearest, 



22 GARIBALDI, 

So many had outpoured their blood 
To enrich with freedom a lov'd land. 
The aspiring Poets all were there. 
Poets are patriots by command 
Of love, warmed by the ideal glare 
Which lights their being. Alfieri the proud, 
Who sang of liberty, with a stern pen 
Straightening the souls of crouching countrymen, 
To lone, sublimest Dante, whom the shroud 
Of exile could not deaden, but he soared 
On flashing pinion from Hell's lowest story. 

Through thickly peopled Purgatory, 
High up to saintly Beatrice the adored. 

All came who with the glow of beauty 
Illuminate their land through Art, 
Or clasp her in the motherly arms of duty . 

Savonarola took close part 
Beside Da Yinci, Angelo, Raphael ; 



GARIBALDI. 23 

Heaven- widening Galileo hand in hand 

Hovered with Titian. The strong spell 

Of the new glory swelled the crowded band 
With great Antiquity, when Rome 
Was Europe. Came from highest home 
The Brutuses and Cicero, 
Long clean of anger, pain, and woe. 
True Scipios and Antonines, 

All glittered round Caprera's sea-set lines. 
With lightning looks of exultation. 
Outshining earth-drawn ecstasy, — 

Looks of emancipation, — 
Amid seraphic melody, 
Too piercing pure for mortal's ear, 
With glow, as of rainbows intermingled. 

Great Garibaldi tenderly outsingled. 

Heavenward with jubilant joy they steer; 

Him, now to immortal spirit-figure moulded. 

They loving waft aloft in angel-arms enfolded. 



ASPIRATION. 

Th' innumerable Suns that star the vault 
We wonder in, when our own Sun 
Unrolls mysterious night, assault 
The soul with such sublimities, they stun 

Our earthly thinkings. When we strain 
Feeling and thought to seize their meanings, 
We vivify the brain 
With quick creative gleamings, 
And these, speaking with voice of solar light, 
Unveil a supersolar Might. 

Man's thought can never grasp, 
But his hi^ feeling can enclasp 
This Might. With the spirit of the whole 



ASPIRATION. 25 

Can swell and bound the soul, 
For of infinitude we are, 

And towards the farthest star 
Can speed ourselves in happy awe, 

Seize its eternal law, 

And feed great yearnings. We 
Are parcel of eternity, 
A portion of all that we feel and see ; 
Not th' outward world alone, but Deity 
Mirrors itself upon the procreant brain. 
That glowing centre of circumferences 
Unlimited, where endless is our gain. 
Spirit is never subject unto fences, 

But with devout elation 
Moves through the brightening brightness of creation. 

Man can reflect this brightness 

Because of the inward rightness 
Of his deep nature. He longs for the better ; 



26 ASPIRATION. 

His true nobility chafes at the fetter 
Of bondman, aiming to be freer, 

On ever higher, purer, to uprear 

His being. And in his puissant self 

Is the divinity that aye protests 

'Gainst pressures that would lay him on the shelf 

Of apathy, foiling his high behests. 

He is a winged creature, his wings beating 
Invisibly the air, to lift him 
To higher ranges, thus defeating 
The lower ; he aye longs to sift him 
Of gross carnalities, and mount 

Towards spirit's primal fount. 
Struggling to obey his soul's attraction 
From mouldy sloth to polished action. 
Inwardly mourning when dull vice 

Embraces him in its constrictive ice. 

At times, amid the passions devilish 



ASPIRATION. 27 

Of a bad man, upshoots a holy wish, 
Like infant's chirp within a robber's cave, 
That circumfuses all 

The father's heart, melting the pall 
Of evil ; or like a single star, — when rave 
The tempest's demons, — that peeps through the 

storm's 
Cold blackness, and the sailor's heart rewarms. 
Life should be a curriculum of prizes ; 
Man is the more himself the more he rises : 
'T is his angelic instinct to aspire : 
Manhood must mount, from low to high, from high to 

higher. 



TRUTH. 

In the hale birth-throes of first being 
Was born this Grod, this bold, all-seeing, 

All-beautifying Truth, 

This old, eternal Youth. 

A universal presence. 
He rides upon the Sun's fierce beams. 
He floats among the Sea's calm dreams ; 
His birthful breath makes nature's crescence. 
A thousand stars glow in his eye ; 
Quintessence of divinity, 
God calls him when he doth create ; 
He in creation hath no mate. 
Without him man were less than beast. 



TRUTH. 29 

And life a tasteless, hopeless feast. 
Loosen Truth's hold on human thought. 
Shadow his splendor in the feeling. 
And, like a painted savage caught 
By cruel potions, man goes reeling. 

In the broad brain Truth quires 

As lightning in the air. 
When, leaping from his cloudy lair, 
Stagnation he with motion fires. 

Man's quenchless guardian-light. 
Truth pilots him through wreckful night, 
And should he stumble into crime. 
Uplifts him with a call sublime. 

Truth is man's spiritual Sun, 
Older, more luminous, than the one 
We walk by in Time's small periphery. 
Our beaming monitor through all Eternity. 



IDEAL. 

In what a nest of love and joy, 
And holy mystery, 
He lay, the baby boy ! 
Hope in her heavenliest glee 
Hovering, and pouring from above 
Sparkles into the eyes of joy and love. 
A soul-bud, beautiful 
As angel's smile on the dawn beaming. 
Life, mighty life, astreaming 
Through him in currents full 
Of perfumed promise, his soft breathing 
To firmer beauty roseate limbs awreathing ; 
For the great Sun looks on him lovingly. 



IDEAL. 31 

Ripening the finer elements of air 

To mould him to proportion's grace, while He 

Who moulds the Sun, and hath creative care 

Of universal being, 
Freights his new breath with subtle filaments 
That speed, like lightning to our seeing, 
To the brain, building with fire its vast contents, 
Sowing it with the seeds 
Of crowned thoughts and deeds, 
Making it exquisitely rife 
With all the fragrancies of life. 
His daily living grows to be 
One long unbroken blossoming. 
And like some tropic tree, 
Unstung by frost's cold sting. 
In prodigal opulence 
Outthrowing mingled sweet incense 
Of flower and fruit from the same branch. 



32 IDEAL. 

New, generous plans bloom near to staimcli 
Nutritious deeds. But he is still a child 

Springing toward youth from station 
To station, on the strong faith lifted 
Of fearless expectation; 
And ever undefiled, 
For that young spirit is so gifted 
With human upward swing 
That in his brain is plied 
Triumphantly Life's subtlest skill 
In moulding individual will. 
Pure as the thoughts of modest bride. 
Or consciousness that good deeds bring, 
Are his desires. 
Like lofty spires 
Upstreaming in the sky 
From solid sure foundations, 
They mount ; not groveling in a sordid sty, 



IDEAL. 33 

But in their swift mutations 
Are so unself ed that angels hear them, 

Taking delight to come down helpful near them. 
The warm tempestuous straits 
That palpitating youth sails through 
He passed unscathed amid the baits 

Of fragrant sensualities untrue, 

Above his head unconsciously unfurled, — 
Daunting th' hypocrisies of the world, — 

The hallowed flag of innocence. 

He entered manhood's strenuous path. 

Invigorated by the intense 

Clean strength of youth's elastic bath. 

Fresh life he drew from a so fervent power. 

It strengthened, sweetened, sanctified each hour. 
Welcome as scented breeze 
In spring, mysterious as the light 

Of silent stars, resistless as decrees 

3 



34 IDEAL. 

Of Fate, and with the might 
Of deepest heave of Ocean, 
Cometh, flame-crested, the warm wave 
Of love, flooding with rapturous emotion. 
And with imaginings so bold and brave, 
His being's core, that he feels recreated. 

As with a larger soul dilated. 
And now his life put on its earnestness. 
The titles, husband, father, were a claim 
His fellows had that he should bless 
His household with th' ascending flame 
Kindled by countrymen's and neighbor's prayer 
For its victorious weal. 
His manhood shone in thoughtful care 
Of largest interests, such as deal 
With the mind's loftiest life, and with 
Sound enterprises, of such pith 

They strengthen while they purge 



IDEAL. 35 

The vital currents of communities. 

His hopes, sprung from the purest deeps 
Of intuition, bore him to the verge 

Of present possibilities. 

He stood upon the heights whence leaps 

To loftier heights prophetic vision, 
(The heights that gender popular derision.) 

In these profoundest moods, 
When on itself the mind creative broods, 
He looked like Shelley, or still younger Keats, 
When rapt, by inspiration inly stirred, 

With head upturned, on magic seats 
They hearken for the voice by genius heard ; 

For he, too, was a poet. Verse 
He wrote not, but that rhythmic sweep of thought 

He had which comes of feelings wrought 

By noble sympathies, that nurse 

The will to lofty deeds, and send 



86 IDEAL. 

The wishes outward where they blend 
With beauty's magic to create 

On the broad solid ground 
Of practice just, compelling very Fate 
To second his aspiring bound. 
So rich he was in human feeling, 
And on his lustrous path he trod 
With such religious sure reliance 
Ever to largest principles appealing, 
That like great Kepler in celestial science, 

He, too, could think the thoughts of God. 
Unto the beautiful, — wherein 
Creative mind is most revealed, — 

His soul was so akin, 

That to him were unsealed 

Secrets of the vast All. 

Much of its mystery 
Was opened to him in the fall 



IDEAL. 37 

Of Niagaras, in the tideful sea, 

In midnight orbs' wise twinkle, 

In the calm throb of his own pulse. 

In the auroral lights that sprinkle 
The night-born dew with glory, 

In the great thunders that convulse 
The clouds, in all the heroic traits of Story. 

Nay, in the common and the little 
Flashes the beautiful, 

In grass and grain, in every tittle 
Of visible, audible nature, in the dull 

As in the bright. Creative power 
Is nowhere felt but there upflames the dower 

Of beauty's life. The microscope 

Keveals the beautiful in mud. 
Flaring upon us an immense new hope, 
For tiniest earthy particle is a bud 
Of promise. What, — could its keen focus reach 
Into the darkest heart, — what would it teach ? 



38 IDEAL. 

Men, living men, were his rich source 
Of knowledge ; for in them the fineness 

Outshone, beside the force, 

Of infinite divineness. 
His daily comrades were the great 
Of the big past, men of such weight 

Their fiery thoughts and deeds 

Become prolific seeds 
Planted in the universal mind. 
The mightiest of men, the Nazarene, 
The topmost man of all his kind. 

Whose life was in the clean 
Inspiring deeps of sympathy. 
Him he aye studied as an exemplar 
Of the highest in humanity. 
Thinking good thoughts, looking afar 

Beyond the smaller self. 
The worldly lusts of show and power and pelf, 



IDEAL. 39 

His day lighted by loves, ne'er dimmed by fears, 

He grew in wisdom with the years, 
His life one limpid stream of joyous duty. 
Which filled it full as June with beauty, 
So full that time brought him no oldness. 
Spirit ruled him as it ruled Socrates ; 
And so, when on his flesh at last crept coldness, 
Shone bright before his spiritual eye the keys 
Of th' Heaven he had made about him on the earth ; 

And from his body's bier 
He rose in th' ecstasy of a new birth. 
His face aglow with beams thrown from th' angelic 
sphere. 



REAL. 

FOR a pen whose ropy ink 

Were purged by piteous tears ! 
So when I come to think 
Of th' omnipresent ill that sears 
The tender, sapf ul, nobje human heart, • 
Words may grow tremulous with fellow-pain, 
But bold to take the part 
E'en of the lowest, who have lain 
Wallowing in crime and lust. 
Can we be loyal to our higher being. 
Can we be pious, loving, just. 
Our inward eyes open to seeing 
What went before and is to come, — 
Our love and pity will grow deeper, 



HEAL. 41 

But so with hope enlightened, that the dumb 
Would speak to us, and smile the very leper. 
In what a hot-bed of uncleanness, want, 

And gross publicity, 

That mother, famished, gaunt, 
Gives birth to him who is to be 

A man 'mong. other men ! 
The first breath that babe breathes is foul, 
His cradle is a crowded pen 
Of blighted manhood, whence a ghoul 
Would fly, baffled by bloodless pallor, 

Where unseen devils grin 
In mockery of human squalor 

And misery's plaintive din. 

In such an atmosphere. 

In a slim stalk so rooted. 
None of the juices can inhere 

Of blooming babyhood. 



42 REAL. 

The mother's milk that makes his blood 

With oozy slime is sooted, 
No blossoms sprout, but only thorns, 
And these turn tortuous back upon their stem, 
Poisoning its tardy sap. Upon his morns 
Nor joy nor sunbeams shine, to sweeten them. 
Begotten so, so bred. 
The sportful fairies, whose delight 
It is to play among the curls 

Of dimpled childhood's head, 
Sprinkle upon him tiny pearls 
Of tears, and saddened take their flight. 
Missing; th' ambrosial endless bath 
Of feminine tenderness, that hath 
Quick nurture in it for his craving heart, 

He languishes and droops. 
Hardly hath he a childhood in these coops 
Of deprivation, suffering aye the smart 



REAL. 43 

Of pain, he whose whole day should be 

Joyous as morning's sunlit dew. 

Painless as a young air-fed tree, 

Thankful as April's carol new. 
Nature, with her close lessons, was to him 
Less than a step-dame. In her lenient lap 
'T was not for him to lie : he was a limb 
Torn from her cruelly, which her sweet sap 
Could no more animate ; for e'en her fount 

Within him was befouled by rank 
Bitter and weedy juices. 
The flood from feeling's sluices 

Ran inward ; he became a tank 

Secluded, sunless, whence could mount 

No breathing to the God of Right. 

Was due his soured maimed plight 
To antenatal deprivation. 



44 REAL. 

Not guilty was he of self -desecration : 

His birth-gifts were lesions and losses ; 
Nature herself, she shut him off 

From Nature ; for her boons he had her crosses ; 

A nightmare dim, was life, he could not doff ; 

The goads that pricked him to a guilty tomb 
She fastened on him in the womb. 

He was born chained, nor could he wish him free ; 

Growing into false freedom he became 

A Bedouin of the street ; he could not be 
Forecasting worker ; a good name 
He never could be crowned with ; Crime 
Crouching about him, spread 
Its pliant net, which Time 
Tightened about his head. 

What is man — what, society — 
And what is Nature's self, that she 



REAL. 45 

Should mock us with such fellows, men 
Who issue not from homes, but from a den, 
To prey upon their brothers ; for they are 
Our brothers, seared at birth with sin's black scar, 

Souls damned ere they have lived their life. 
Their life a doom of hate and bleeding strife. 
Why live they, these curst creatures, men who dare 
No whither look ; if inward, they are met 

With the soul's shudder ; if they glare 
At Heaven, the stars twinkle a threat. 

Mysterious being sweeps 
From height to height, from deep to deeps, 

Higher and deeper ever ; 

And man's upright endeavor 
Can compass more and more these heights. 

The more his own deep being 

Grows master of the mights 
Wherewith his soul is gifted by the all-seeing. 



46 HEAL. 

Himself partakes of the creative power : 

This is his bounteous mighty dower. 
Such mastery is a token 
Of manhood, strong to have broken 
Many a chain that bound him, 

And with Truth's diadem becrowned him. 
Within him are the forces that uplift 

His life to this free altitude. 
Such freedom is a gift 

With spiritual sovereignty endued. 
He is become more than an earthly king. 
And rules, as Jesus rules. 

Through indestructible rights which bring 
Eesistless sway, that schools 
Men's minds through their own light 

Kindled by the supremest might. 
In this exalted zeal 

Angels become his aids, for they 



. REAL. 47 

Are only men wlio think and feel 
More finely, having dropped their clogging clay. 

When through a self-earned moral sovereignty 

Many shall havQ become loyal and free, 

Then these can free their brothers, 'bolish jails, 

Silence the multitudinous wails 

Of vice and crime. But we are all 
As yet too heedless of the higher call, 
Too much the slaves of sense and fallacies. 
We build luxurious jails, and call them palaces ; 
Out of the common self and vain conceits 
We build theologies that cannot save. 
Being but rotting steps, showy deceits. 

That wilder and the more enslave. 
This self -emancipation is a weary 

Unceasing battle of the higher 
Against the lower seK, often with dreary 



48 REAL. 

Outlook ; but God is not a liar, 
Who gave us reason, hope, and aspiration 

That they should droop unto prostration. 
Onward and upward is the rally-cry 

That ever sounds above the din 
Of life's tough war, aye, cheering us to die 

Champions of freedom from sour sin. 
Deep in the best souls lives a true ideal. 
And interlinked therewith, as love with duty, 

Forever glows the consciousness 
That we ourselves and brother men can bless 

With daily and supremest beauty. 
Marrying th' ideal with the real. 



THE BEAUTIFUL. 

I. 

Theoughout th' eternal sequences of time 

Momently is shed by every fiery Sun 

Of the hot hundred millions safely spun 

Into immensity by the sublime 

Almighty Will, the Beautiful, whose clime 

Is the universal air, across which run 

Ceaseless creative messages that stun 

Our thought, straining after words to rhjnne 

With th' unimaginably great. In each 

Creative thought glows, as its very soul. 

The Beautiful, which is essence divinest. 

That colors, shapes and perfumes the vast Whole 

And every part, e'en to the simple finest. 

Sparkling wherever thought and feeling reach. 



THE BEAUTIFUL. 

II. 
Beauty's deep office holy is to teach, 
Through the purification of dehght 
Kindhng into clear vision the higher sight. 
Within a cove, upon a sunny beach, 
I have seen the mighty Ocean, — without breach 
Of his high privileges, stormful might 
Laying aside, — come calmly in, with bright 
Dear children, round, ruddy, as ripened peach, 
To toy, gently rolling low-crested billows 
Into their fearless arms, — like monarch playing 
On the floor with his gleeful boys, arraying 
Himself in love instead of robe and crown, — 
The waves wooing the little limbs like pillows : 
A sight the eyes in lustral tears to drown. 



ROSA. 

She was a child, and not a child, 
She looked so blandly wise 
Out of her large blue eyes. 
Her gentleness was wild 
With a quick freedom fawn-like, 
And freshness that was dawn-like. 
Docile to all her teaching, 
Yet from within she seemed to draw 
The best, and, as she were upreaching 
For something that she heard or saw, 

Would silent sit, her head 
Upturned in visionary mood, 
As though her tender thoughts were fed 



52 ROSA. 

By angels with unearthly food. 
Two romping brothers, who were older, 
At first would rudely mock her 

For trances that did hold her 
Apart. But soon they ceased to shock her 
With boyish gibings. She 
By sure degrees became 
To them a mystery 
For which they had no taunting name. 
The father's love almost to awe 
Was lifted towards his blooming girl, 
Who with deep tenderness could thaw 
His colder moods, as she would coy unfurl 
Before him thoughts so luminously true 
They soothed with lessons holier than he knew. 

Lovelier she blossomed with each year. 
As though creative spirit rained its best 
Upon her, and would rear 



ROSA. 53 

A being ablaze with Beauty's sovereign crest, 

Beauty, sovereign solely through glow 

Of clean unselfish feeling ; 

And then it is the promise-bended bow 

A heaven above revealing. 

Her father and her brothers felt, — 

And half unconsciously, — 
This subtle power, that could melt 
To tenderness the three, 
And on her bearing throws 
Its grace, as on the rose 
A fragrant sap the rose's loveliness. 

Upon the mother's heartstrings press 
Close sympathies so deep 
They her whole nature tune 
To harmonies that steep 
Her in a faith that nothing can impugn. 
Every hour she would fold 
The daughter to a breast, 



54 ROSA, 

That almost ached with love it could not hold, 
Thus easing a sweet fulness that oppressed. 
Rosa would lie in infinite content, 
Their beings each in other blent. 

At noon one day she was not there ; 
Empty at dinner, too, her place. 
Then they all learnt what a cold air 
They breathed without her glowing face. 
And still she came not : then grew pale 
The mother, restless the two brothers. 

The father, with a male 
Paternal strength comforting the lone mother's 
Quick fears, strode into the small town, 

The boys following in tears. 

Soon, loosened from all fears, 

They were upon her track ; 
For she already had a dear renown 



ROSA. 55 

For beauty and for kindliness. Ean back 

The joyful, weeping, elder brother 

To bring joy to his weeping mother. 
They found her in a fever-stricken hovel, 

With soft wet cloths cooling the skin 

Of two young children. They who grovel 
In the abjectness of vain self -pampering 

Would start at that which Cherubin 

Are holier for witnessing. — 
Beside them, on another bed of straw, 

Their mother lay, her features lank 
With the worn pallor which gaunt fevers gnaw. 
When Rosa moved to follow. 

She scarcely had the strength to thank 
Her gentle nurse. When Rosa kissed her hollow, 

Wan cheek, she reverently laid 

Her hand upon the child, and said, 
" come, come again ! " 



56 ROSA. 

Her words thrilling with thankfulness and pain. 
The body goes, the soul remains. 
When Kosa passed into the street 
Her presence still was felt, nor could the pains 

Resume their wasting heat. 
A soul-joy planted near a sorrow 
Works with such healing sympathy 

That even by to-morrow 

The grief will no more be. 
The soul is a creative power : 
It builds this wondrous jfleshly frame, 
And it can cure the ills that cower 

Within it, life to lame. 
Souls are all brothers, and the healthiest 

Draws from its primal source 

A deep benignant force. 

To which the first and wealthiest 
Of earthly goods is empty chaff 



ROSA. 67 

"Winnowed by wind from wheat, 
Or as the worldling's laugh 
Wherewith he would his own soul cheat. 
Eosa ran on, before her father, brother, 
To meet her dearest mother. 

In a gifted girl, outringing 
Joy in a healthy home, a fervor, 

Of life is ever bringing 

Fresh will and strength to nerve her 
For each return of morning. Sorrow 
As yet could take no living root. 
But each day's little grief the morrow 
Dried off ere it could grow to fruit. 
Eosa, with all her inward brooding, 
Was most herself when other eyes 
Looked into hers. She, excluding 
None from her love, closely could prize 



58 ROSA. 

Both old and young, the false and true man : 

Herself so fully human. 
Where the rays fell of her warm eyes 
They made love sprout, in her school-mates 
Growing so strong, it crushed the lies 
Of Envy, which abates 
Earely its rancor towards the gifted good : 
Envy feeds on its own infected blood. 
So alive was she with fellow-feeling. 
Her ruling impulse was to help 

The weak, happiest when kneeling 
By the sick poor ; nor was the whelp 
Of heartless lust beyond the reach 
Of her capacity to teach. 
A sympathetic tenderness can waken 
A hope, a love, in soul the most forsaken. 

Angelic instincts taught her 
There is a soul of good in evil things. 



ROSA. 59 

And now caressing years had brought her 
A fifteenth May, when life its censer swings 

With freshest perfumes laden. 
Never did flowers enrich their bloom 

With joy of heavenlier maiden; 

For in and through this glow, — 
As light upon a landscape's beauty, 
Transfiguring the outward show, — 
Shone the pure soul of love and duty, 
Which, like th' invisible spirit that makes 

Night's starr'd sublimity. 
In the beholder's raptured being wakes 
Feelings of high divinity. 
Athrough the portals garlanded 

Of womanhood she gazed 
With feelings less with sadness sped 
Than joy ; nor was the vista hazed 
With passion's dim imaginings, 



60 ROSA. 

Which make the self an ever-shifting centre 

Of prosperous being. Wings, 
Gilded by whiter rays, young Fancy lent her, 
Kays that illume a higher plane 
Whereon both joy and pain 
Are tempered by emotion 
That stills the soul's high yearning, 
Like cordial piety's devotion 
Invisible inward incense burning. 
Beyond the seK she could untimely look, 

Having as child far visions, 
Wiser than those that from a darkened nook 
Rule th' aged worldling's confident decisions. 
Appearances had never flattered 

Even her untilled youth 
With misty magnifyings. Truth 
* Enveloped her and shattered 
The films that cause the false and small to seem 



ROSA. 61 

The large and true, and make, 
To most, life a delusive dream. 
From which on earth they never wake. 
So, into womanhood she carried 
Infantile innocence, with its first tender 
Blossoms, indissolubly married 
With angeFs wisdom to defend her. 
Her life she could not live amid the shoals 
And sands whereon life's ocean rolls. 
And breaks its mightiness in foam. 
Like the finned travelers of the sea, 

Her sole congenial home 
Was in the deeps, of deep humanity. 

And these she found beside 
The shoals ; for always there are deeps 
Where is a soul ; and where abide 

Its master-loves, and leaps 

Its inmost flame, she peered, 



62 ROSA. 

And met thankful reflection of her feeUng, 
ThankfuUest from hearts most seared. 
Like Pharos high she stood, appeahng 

To passers mid false Fashion's 
Cold shallows and unfervent passions. 
None were repelled. Her beauty drew 
All to her, as the magnet steel, 
And then, her modest earnestness but few, 
Nay none, could long withstand, and they would feel 
Their hearts warm with new love. 
A jealous matron spoke 
To Rosa with a sneer would move 
A worldly girl's quick wrath ; it could provoke 

In her only meek humbleness. 
" Nay, I pretend to naught," with a deep blush 
She said, that made her loveliness 
So whelming, it could crush 
The matron's jealousy, that she, with look 



ROSA. 63 

Of mingled love and shame, 

The dazzling maiden took 
Into her arms, — with a self -blame 

Not known before, — did press, 
And with true tenderness caress. 
Upon her cheek Rosa's tears fell 

As Heaven's gift of rain 
In autumn to depleted well. 

Into that glowing focus, Rosa's brain, 

Had poured their ripening rays 

Twenty-one summers ; she 
Felt the high part that woman plays. 
As yet but half self-consciously. 
The mastering passion, that unveils 
Life's beauties, wants, vibrations, deeps, — 
As morning's glow earth's wonders, — assails 
The whole strong being to wake from sleeps 



^ 64 ROSA. 

That hold it passive, she had felt, 
Not yielded to : she would not break 
Her nature's wholeness, and she dwelt 
In motives so impersonal, that, to stake 
Them on uneven marriage, were 

To risk her life's success. 
The man, for whom she might have joyed 
In love's full rapture, was both fair 
To look on and to listen to ; to bless 

Life-union too alloyed 
With self. She lived out of herself, and he 
For and within himself. Her mate 

She knew he could not be ; 
She knew, moreover, how to school her. 
So strong she was and pure, she made the Fate 
Herself, that seemed to rule her. 
The heights whereon she lived were heights 
From lowliness. Into the nights 



ROSA. 65 

Of bodily and spiritual need 
She brought beams of th' illumination 
That had so splendently enfreed 
Herself. There was accumulation 
Of wealthiest wealth. All that she owned 
She would impart ; and as her riches 
Were boundless spiritual treasures, they were loaned 
Freely as air or promises of witches. 
In her, life was an ever active love. 

As whitened Alps the Sun 

With heavenly heat doth move 
To pour unstinted streams upon 

The thankful plains and valleys, 

The warmth of her large soul 
Drove her towards unprovided alleys, 

To allay a ceaseless dole. 

The freedom she enjoyed, 

Through soaring powers inborn, — 



66 ROSA. 

By thoughtful will whetted, upbuoyed, — 
Inspired her soul with life the thorn 
Of baffled love, that wounded 
A tender bosom, to draw out, 
To hush the petty cries that sounded 
Through that wide palace, and to rout 
The whimpering imps who would usurp 
Its glowing hospitable halls. 

Thus did great Freedom, — greater 
Than passion-swayed Jupiter, — 
Offspring of spiritual will, 
The roots of amorous love extirp. 
With its loud partial calls. 
Nay more, she could distill, 
From thwarted feeling, balm 
That opened wider view. 
And wrought that spirit-calm 
Of conquest which doth aye renew 



ROSA. 67 

With freshened force the sway 
Of the high self, and makes an atmosphere 
For longer sight and action's surer way. 
Thus of herself she grew more fully master, 
Turning to light whereby to steer 

What seemed at first disaster. 

Life deepened round her, and the more she knew 
The more she found to do. 

Life deepened, but it darkened not. 

Seen deeper, life is nowhere dark. 

In lookers' vision is a spot 

That swallows up life's hopeful spark, 

A spot black with the inground grime 

Of false theologies and crime 

Ubiquitous. Rosa saw deeper. 

Deeper she saw, because she felt 
So deeply, purely. Calm as dreamless sleeper. 

She saw the basest. 



68 ROSA. 

Near her dwell 
A cruel father of motherless daughters. 
To them she came to be like a new mother 
As naturally as waters 
Their level find. No other 
Could have so long that door 
Kept open. Hospitality 

He knew not, and his core 
Was so unsocial that, to flee 
A stranger's face and talk 
No blandishment could balk. 
Deeper than blandishment 
Was Rosa's undesigned attractiveness. 
In her triumphantly were blent 
The soul's and body's best address. 
He even loved to see her enter, 
And by her tuneful voice 
And the quick power her soulful manners lent her 



ROSA. 69 

His rudeness was entranced, as by a choice 
Adagio is wild leopard's. 
To his mild orphan girls 
Her presence was a guardianship, as shepherd's 

To helpless flock. To sudden whirls 
Of wrathful ruggedness he was a prey, 
Tore which, as galliots in a squall. 
His gentle daughters quailed. One day, 

On provocation small, 
Or none, he thundered angry speech. 
Rosa rose quick with features flushed, 
Spoke warm rebuke at such a breach, 
And left the chamber. Hushed 
As funeral group, the stillness broken 

By sobs, was that sad room. 
The father paced, pale, no word spoken ; 

The daughters sunk in gloom 
At the thought, they should not see her more. 



70 ROSA. 

A slow haK hour had gone : the door 
Opened, and as the day's first light 
On anxious crew, near rockbound coast, 
Fighting 'gainst wind and night, 
Broke on them Rosa's beaming face : almost 
Shrieked the daughters. Her countenance 
Alight with spiritual beauty's fire, — 
As one in heaven-transported trance 
Listening to angelic quire, — 
She approached the father, saying. 
In voice atremble with humility, — 
As were the soul's choice sparkle through it raying, 
" Pardon, pardon me ! " 
Astounded, mute, he gazed ; 
Then humbly turning to his daughters mazed, 
As he a life-wrong would confess 
In tones of a strange tenderness. 
He cried, " Forgive ! forgive ! forgive ! " 



EOSA. 71 

Then noiseless left the room. 
This is, to live, to live, 
Inly said Kosa, as she felt the doom 
Of tyranny was lifted. Their warm tears 

Of a new joy mingled with hers 
In close embrace, hers who had plucked the burs 
That daily pricked their hearts with monstrous fears. 
Rosa had sweetened a whole family's breath, 
Had planted life where had been death. 

Aye, humanly to live 

Is not, to keep alert 
The senses with befitting food ; 
Is not, to make the corporal sieve, — 
Which is but animated dirt, — 
The end, it being a means to spiritual good ; 

Is not, to flatter passion 

With wasteful repetition 

Of its subservient ration, 



72 ROSA. 

To help hungry ambition 

Up to its slippery heights, 

To gather fruit that feeds 

To plethora the greeds ; — 
But 't is, to work so that the soul 
Be ever splendent with the lights, 
The consecrated lights, of love and duty, 
Illumination that from pole to pole 
Keeps the earth freshened with unearthly beauty. 
To arrest a tear before it fall. 
And make it glisten in a smile. 
To antidote a sore heart's gall, 
Efface with truth incipient guile. 

Divert a threatening hate. 
And harness it to draw with love. 
And thus to substitute for Fate 
A lordlier mandate from above ; 
This is to brighten, vivify 
Dear life, and lift it human high. 



FOUNDATIONS. 

Like the two hands that knead our daily bread, 
Nature and man should work with even will 
And watchfulness, when innocent childhood lifts 
Its helpless palms and prayerful eyes, and prays 
For love and wisdom in the guardianship 
Of its young years. Nature is ever wise, 
Watchful and active as th' unhalting Sun, 
That warms and keeps alive all earthly being. 
On man Nature outpours her choicest wealth ; 
He is entrusted to her motherly love ; 
Part of herself, and yet, greater than she, 
Keflectively creative, he doth rise 
Out of great Nature, and above her soars ; 



74 FOUNDATIONS. 

For he hath wings of thought, precursive thought, 
Wherewith, and manful will, he rules his own 
And her resources vast. 

Hale human babe 
Is a potential deity on earth ; 
Lord of the outward world, if he do grow 
To be lord of himself. Deep Nature calls 
On deeper man to mould an infant's powers 
And inborn potencies, within man's sphere, 
His boundless sphere, almost omnipotent. 
Love and high reason are his master-gifts. 
Empowering him to be like to a God. 
Teach the loved child to know and love all things, - 
Earthworms, that so beneficently work 
Beneath the surface of the teemf ul soil, 
Insects that buzz joyously through the air, 
The bird who pipes a jubilant holiday 
To tune man's heart into blithe harmony 



FOUNDATIONS. 75 

With this all-quickening multitudinous life, 
The obedient horse and ox that multiply 
His strength a hundred-fold. Show him the Sun 
Setting dim dawn ablaze with full-orbed light, 
Higher and higher in benignant power 
Mounting to bounteous hot magnificence. 
Teach him no fear ; the ragef ul hurricane, 
The thunderclap, let him not dread. Teach him 
To shrink before rebuke, — even though it be 
No louder than the faintest whisper's breath, — 
That from his deepest sounds with sacred voice. 
Within his inmost is a deathless spark. 
Of fire to guide and rule. This is for him 
The holy of holies. Here, in humble awe. 
Let him oft hearken : thus hearkening, he 
Is nearest to th' Almighty. When the stars 
Look down on him, and he on them, is wrought 
The chain that binds him to the supreme Mind : 



76 FOUNDATIONS. 

These myriad eyes embrace him with their beams. 
Like diamond, filHng its quick heart with light 
From the far sun, to glow with mingled fire, 
Man's deep capacity for reverence 
Swells to religious thought when midnight opes, 
With shining stellar keys, Infinitude, 
Deepening the moral beauty of his life. 



POETRY. 

It is not in the trees or in the ocean, 
Nor in the air or earth or spacious skies, 
Nor in the forms of nature, or the motion 
Of stream or fawn, not even in the eyes 
Of woman : in the soul of man it hes. 
This peerless, heavenly gift, creative power 
That lights and consecrates all these, and phes 
For man's uplifting in bright happiest hour 
This dearest privilege and his divinest dower. 



CEASELESS CREATION. 

The smile in the eye 
Is born but to die. 
The bud of the rose 
Full blooms but to fade, 
The faster it grows 
The sooner 't is dead. 
The mother's delight 
At day-break is born, 
'T is dead ere the night 
Of the next gloomy morn : 
The father, he strains 
Through turmoil and strife ; 
Mid bafflings and pains 



CEASELESS CREATION. 79 

Death swallows his life. 
Life 's all a dream, 
Death is a sleep, 
And joy but a gleam, 
While trouble we keep. 

Put out the great light 
Of faith and of hope, — 
In the darkness of night 
You ever will grope ; 
For hope and dear faith 
Are the sun of the soul : 
'T is your blindness that saith 
All is dark, — like the mole. 

The smile in the eye, 

It never can die ; 

From the soul 't is a flash 



80 CEASELESS CREATION, 

That in joy will survive 

The gloom and the crash 

Of this earthly hive. 

A soul hath the rose 

That renews its bright birth : 

Perennial it blows 

To sweeten the earth. 

As star lost in day, 

The babe hath been won 

By glory of ray 

Outshining the sun. 

The mother's blind eyes 

Can't see its ascent, 

As with saddest sighs 

Her bosom is rent. 

The babe comes down to her, 

With kisses doth woo her, 

With tenderest greeting 



CEASELESS CREATION. 81 

Whispers heavenly meeting. 
The father, he meets it 
(With a new sight he 's blest), 
In wonderment greets it, 
From earth-toils at rest. 

Life 's not a mere dreaming, 
'T is rather a beaming 
From million-fold fire. 
Each kindled and signed 
By the infinite Mind, 
Each aye straining higher. 
Creative is life, 
A ceaseless creation, 
A getting things rife 
For endless mutation. 
For change is its law 
r And motion its joyance ; 



82 CEASELESS CREATION. 

Its flow hath no flaw, 
And it lives upon buoyance. 
When once 't is in being 
It never can cease ; 
Delight of th' Allseeing, 
Eternal its lease. 



SKETCHES. 

Between curved eyebrows and her auburn hair 

A smooth white forehead shone, 
Like finest Parian gHstening in the glare 
Of genius' handwork, as, all alone 
In beauty, flash the Paphian's wondrous limbs. 
The silken eyebrows arch above 
Soft eyes aglow with love, 
So warm, their lustre it bedims. 
A Cupid's bow are her two lips, 
So sweet, each of the other sips 
Moisture to make itself the sweeter. 
In cheek and dimpled chin, small oval ear. 
Is nothing to defeat her 
Dazzling, quick-conquering charm. A leer 



84 SKETCHES. 

Quailed before all this beauty, which 

Rounded her neck, then slid 

Lower, so fresh and rich 

Itself it quickly hid 
(Like virtue from a wricked world 
Or fear before a flag unfurled) 
'Neath kerchief, laces and like covers, 
Delicate provocatives to lovers. 
But for this hiding, the far-famed 
Greek Helen's bosom had been shamed. 

These beauties are beauties, and great ; 
But they are for joyance, not sorrow, 
For early years, not for the late. 
For to-day, and not for to-morrow ; 
They are shallow, they cannot be deep, 
Beauties when you can laugh, not when you weep. 
They wither too soon and grow cold, 
And die before they are old. 



SKETCHES. 85 

While admiration of a manly nose 

And eyes cerulean blue, 
O'erhung by eyebrows ligbtly brown, 
Mounts towards climax on th' ivory hue 
Of forehead with smooth wavy crown, 

And in its rapture knows 
Not where to pause, — all features melt 

In a transfiguring light, 

"Which, like the sacred belt 
Of halo, quickens blessed sight. 
From deathless inward beauty sprang 

That belt of holy brightness. 
Beauty of feelings, thoughts, that rang 
With echoes from the soul of rightness. 
Mere outward human beauty is a mask. 
An empty, perishable cask. 
Because within his brain are born 
Powers angelic, given to bloom 



86 SKETCHES. 

In spheres higher than this, his earthly morn, 
Man's compact countenance has the room 
For supreme beauty, variousness and life. 
Before a face and head thus nobly bright 
Joyed admiration rose to fullest height, 
Beholding great humanity so rife. 

Th* unconscious holder of such gifts 

And beauties rapturously gazed 

Upon the loveliness that blazed 
Beneath that auburn hair. 

'T was not the beauty that uplifts, 

Fresh as it was and rapturing fair. 
He looked and passed ; for him here was no mate. 
Corporeal loveliness was not his bait. 
A life-partner waited his coming, splendid 

From glow of feminine beauty blended 
Of purest innocence 

And rich emotion's reach, with sense 
So broadly masculine, 



SKETCHES. 87 

It lay beneath her feeling's nobleness 
Like whitest marble of an Apennine, 
Which Angelo's sure hand is to caress, 
Beneath the fervent opulence and grace 
Of flower and foliage on great Italy's fair face. 



NO END. 

There is no end : Eternity 
Seizes each atom, and to be 

Involves unceasing growth. 
Mind quickens all : 

To die were rotting sloth, 
Hateful impossible impotence. 
Life tendeth upward, and to fall 

Is but a seeming, whence 

Uprise again all things : 
Mind, their great mother, lendeth wings. 
Heart-beats cease not within the tomb : 
The " spiritual body " quits dissolving flesh, 
And far above a fleshly doom 



NO END. 89 

Carries the souVs unceasing throb to fresh 

And higher planes of being. 

Life, in its milUon shapes, 

Is an incessant fleeing 
From outworn moulds to new ; escapes 

From matter's bonds, ascending 

Through infinite degrees. 
Creating and effacing, rending 

Material forms with th' ease 

Of spirit-mastership. 

Aye razing to rebuild, 
Through instantaneous power to equip 
With its deep inwardness all atoms, filled 
Thereby with an instinctive need 

Of nursing every seed 
Planted by overruling Mind. 

Mysterious Mind lends eyes 
To all things, even to what seems blind, 
To comets in the boundless skies, 



90 NO END. 

Nor less to molecules that creep 

Through th' universe, upbuilding it, 

Mightiest of instruments, that heap 
Life upon life, and j&t 

Parts to their place in grandest wholes, 

Obedient to primordial Will. 
Mind launches thus infinitude of souls, 
The purposes of being to fulfill. 
Mind's mighty power and splendor aye attended 
By thoughts of perfectness, so interblended 

With mind's own essence, that they glow 

Twin sovereign lights, — perennial bow 

Of promise, over all supreme. 

Immeasurably bright and pure. 
They waken in all creatures soaring dream. 

And thereby all forever lure 

Upward towards better, higher, 
Inflaming all with quenchless, holy fire. 



OMNIPRESENCE OF BEAUTY. 

Beauty is so deep 't is one with life, 

And no imaginative knife 

Can part their threads, close intertwined 

By primal generative Mind. 
Nay, Beauty might be called the life of being, 
Primordial essence bright. 

Aye, very soul of the all-decreeing, 
Original, creative, holy Might. — 

Sea-shells come up from the salt sea. 

Sprinkling fresh beauty through their eyes, 

Iridescent interfusedly ; 

With gleam of sea-dipped dyes, 

And th' infinite grace of varying carves, 



92 OMNIPRESENCE OF BEAUTY. 

Refining, soothing tenderest nerves. 
With what delight of recognition 
We greet the peeping leaf-buds green, 

Into life's first fruition 
Bursting in multitudinous sheen, 

With unslaked thirstiness 

Drinking the sweetened air, 
Reveling in the sun's warm caress, 
Outgushed so numerous, broad, and fair, 
They make the forest's grandeur vast. 
And now they are past, fallen, gone to enrich the roots 
That nourished them. But Beauty is not past. 
Instead of leaves, from each tree shoots 

Radiance, as though the sun 
Had showered stars among the branches : 
But for an hour ; at noon are none, — 
Melted by the same might that launches. 
Even in winter, heated arrows. Lo ! 
In a night Beauty re-assumes 



t 



OMNIPRESENCE OF BEAUTY. 

His sway, sheeting with snow 
Each twig and limb : the forest looms, 

In the calm morning light, 
A wondrous maze of sparkling white. 
Again the sap reflows, and floods 

The earth with leafy green. 
A twofold beauty is in the woods, 
A vocal rivaling the seen ! 
Music of a transcendant quire. 
Cadence unreached by instrument or words, 
Sweet improvisation, straining higher. 
In the melodious worshiping of birds 
At dawn, spontaneous anthem, rich and pure, 

Mounting to Heaven whence it came. 
To man's devotion timely overture. 

Waking religious joy without a name. 

From rivulet to river. 

From cataract to dew. 

From lakelet's shore to ocean's, 



94 OMNIPRESENCE OF BEAUTY. 

Great Beauty is the giver 

Of joyance ever new ; 

Through aspects and through motions, 

In Nature's colors, forms 

Of leopard and of fishes, 

In sunny calms, in storms, 

In human thoughts and wishes, 

In lightning's lifeful flashes, 

In children's silken hair, 

In eyes and soft eyelashes, — 

Beauty is everywhere. 
And man, to be himself, must see it : 
Chief child of Beauty, he should rise 
To the height of his high birth : nay, he must be it 

In feeling thought, if he would prize 
The grandeur of his opportunities. 
The splendor of his possibilities. 
Beauty sparkles over surfaces because 

It vivifies the core. 



OMNIPRESENCE OF BEAUTY. 95 

Inseparable from life, one are their laws : 
Beauty is the gold in life's ore. 
The highest we can know 
Is human life , in man 
Beauty's great lessons glow 
Their deepest, in the van 
Of all corporeal being. 
His body, what a wonder ! 
Earth's supreme beauty, all o'erseeing, 
Majestic more than any creature under 
Heaven's cope ; superlatively framed 
For strength, and spring, and grace, 
Alone erect, by heat or cold untamed. 
In his compact, far-looking, listening face 
Form and expressiveness unmatched. 
Behind upreaching forehead bold, — 
As Heaven's best will had been unlatched, 
And let loose potencies untold, — 
That mighty product lies, the human brain, 



96 OMNIPRESENCE OF BEAUTY. 

The miracle of miracles, the seat 

Of Mind ; Mind which, once growing, never wanes, 

But action follows its eternal beat. 

Mind ! Through those sun-shaped orbs, the eyes, 

Lightens this mightiness ! 
Behind in awful silence lies 
The tool of puissance only less 
Than high omnipotence, — 
Puissance of such a might 
That should it rend its ordained continents 
Before its glare would pale all light 
Of suns, and to a whisper sink 
The tropic thunderburst. 
But on this fearful brink 
We stand safe and assured. We are not curst 
By primal power : we are blest 
By a divine beneficence. 
Potent to subject all to law's behest. 
Wielding 'gainst chaos absolute defense. 



OMNIPRESENCE OF BEAUTY. 97 

And this quick instrument of soul, 
This master-mass of matter superfine, 
This vivid brain, is only great as whole 
Through self-subsistent parts that all combine 

In rhythmical subordination. 
Its maker. Mind, with the lower organs holding 

The infinite details of creation. 

With the highest in its grasp enfolding 

The largest, deepest, thought and feeling. 

The grandeur and the reach of Man, 
His splendent possibilities revealing. 
Therewith divinist beauty, purpose, plan. 

The nearer we to spiritual sources, 

The fuller, subtler, is the unfolding 
Of Beauty's life. Man with his earthly forces 

Gets only glimpses bright, beholding, 
Through deep, inspiring sensibilities, 
Kesplendent tokens, signs. 



98 OMNIPRESENCE OF BEAUTY. 

Of what the supreme wisdom is 

In its beneficent designs. 
On earth man could easier the sun outstare 
Than front, unblasted, Beauty's heavenhest glare. 



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